GENEVA, 11 November 2004 — Wealthy businessman Yeslam Bin Laden, one of Osama Bin Laden’s half-brothers, hopes that a new perfume may help sweeten the atmosphere that has surrounded him since Sept. 11, 2001.

“It must be a smell that comes from way back, there’s something about it,” Bin Laden said, enthusing about the “Yeslam” perfume he presented at a trade fair on the French Riviera last month.

The Saudi-Swiss investor praised the Italian-born specialist in Grasse, the French perfume capital, who helped him choose the $103 fragrance. “It’s the women’s one that struck me,” added Bin Laden, one of Osama’s 53 siblings.

A range of products using his family name had been planned before the deadly attacks on the United States and the brand — with the spelling he has always used — was registered as a trademark, Bin Laden said.

“I could not use Bin Laden any more and Yeslam is a rare name, it means “bliss” although there is no single translation,” the Geneva-based father of three added.

Jet-setting Yeslam is pinning his future on the “floral sensuality” of lily of the valley, narcissus, jasmine, sandalwood, ylang-ylang and musk, while his half brother Osama is thought to rove between hideouts in the wilderness between Afghanistan and Pakistan.

Although he refrained from criticism, Bin Laden reiterated that he has had no contact with Osama since 1981. “It was a distant relationship. I left Saudi Arabia when I was six or seven. I spent my life in boarding schools. I never grew up with the person.” Yet Yeslam Bin Laden became the most prominent relative of the world’s most wanted man in recent years.

The businessman, who became a Swiss citizen in May 2001, left Saudi Arabia about 20 years ago, severing ties with the huge Bin Laden construction group his father built up over decades.

Despite insisting that his Geneva based Saudi Investment Company (SICO), which invests his closest family’s fortune, kept an “arms-length relationship” with the late patriarch’s business, Bin Laden is proud of his father’s achievement. “My father built the mosque in Makkah and the mosque in Madinah. It was the biggest construction company. The family name is very well known and respected,” Bin Laden emphasized.